Jonah Peretti

Founder, BuzzFeed

Arianna Huffington

Created news for the masses, by the masses

Last year BuzzFeed started morphing from a social news site known for its silly lists and galleries of grumpy cats into a real digital news enterprise. Established media started paying attention as Peretti, 39, picked off some of their best talent—such as editor Ben Smith, formerly of Politico—and then started copying his viral genius, which Peretti played with at the MIT Media Lab and as a cofounder of the Huffington Post. The idea: Create content and ads that we can’t resist passing along to everyone. — Caroline Howard